Democrats Would Rather Embrace Crime Than Prevent It

        Pro-crime Democrats are propelling New York toward anarchy and financial ruin.

        The seven candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for Gotham’s mayor unanimously oppose increasing penalties for farebeaters. That includes frontrunners Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani. Their refusal to crack down on farebeaters — all by itself — disqualifies them for the city’s top job.

        These pols do not regard law-abiding New Yorkers as their constituents. Instead they’re siding with criminals and left-wing ideologues who excuse crime as a side effect of society’s imperfections.

        Stopping farebeating keeps dangerous criminals out of the subway, explains Ray Kelly, the longest-serving New York Police Department commissioner. “In previous administrations, proactive fare evasion enforcement has been a powerful tool in reducing overall subway crime.”

        Thieves and assailants don’t swipe a card to get to the trains before preying on riders. Their first lawless act is jumping the turnstile. And many have rap sheets.

        Though arrests are infrequent, 45% of those arrested for farebeating in 2023 were already wanted for other crimes, and about 10% were carrying weapons. Clearly more farebeating enforcement would make the subways safer.

        A crackdown is also needed to fill the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s empty coffers and eliminate the financial rationale for congestion pricing. Some 14% of subway riders and nearly half of bus riders beat the fare, adding up to a $800 million-per-year shortfall in MTA revenue.

        Gov. Kathy Hochul’s congestion pricing is one way to offset the shortfall. But that’s a gut punch to people driving into Manhattan who obey the law and work for a living.

        As President Donald Trump reminded Hochul when they met at the White House in February, “If you let the police do their job” against farebeaters, the congestion pricing revenue isn’t needed.

        “The way it is now,” said the president, “you feel like a sucker if you pay the fare.”

        New York state law makes farebeating a Class A misdemeanor, allowing police officers to issue a criminal summons or make an arrest. But arrests are rare, and district attorneys almost never prosecute.

        In January, MTA head Janno Lieber called on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and Bronx Attorney Darcel Clark to change course and prosecute persistent farebeaters. Lieber calls fare evasion “the No.1 existential threat.”

        In March, the government watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission also called for more prosecutions.

        Good luck with that. Democrats have been moving in the opposite direction for years.

        In 2017 Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced he would stop prosecuting fare evasion. Other DAs followed. From 2019 to 2024, fare evasion roughly doubled, according to MTA data.

        No surprise that violent subway felonies rose 14% during the same time period.

        A year ago, Hochul eliminated the civil fine for first-time offenders from $100 to zero as part of her state budget proposal. What’s her thinking, that it’s OK to steal the first time?

        Worse, a bill currently in the New York state legislature, sponsored by state Sen. Cordell Cleare from Harlem, would wipe the criminal penalty off the books entirely.

        Decriminalizing farebeating is crazy. “Civil summonses have proven not to be a deterrent,” says Kelly.

        As for the refusal of DAs to prosecute, Kelly says “district attorney discretion was never meant to allow refusal to prosecute an entire category of crime such as fare evasion.”

        Prosecuting fare evasion should be a litmus test for voters. New Yorkers live in many different areas, but the subway is everybody’s neighborhood.

        The Democrats are failing the test.

        Voters need to consider other candidates. Mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, is for tougher enforcement.

        “If we start saying it’s all right for you to jump the turnstile, we are creating an environment where any- and everything goes,” he warned in 2022. Since then, he’s lacked the political capital to get much done.

        Curtis Sliwa, the Republican mayoral candidate, also calls for “aggressive enforcement.”

        Richie Barsamian, a former cop running as a Republican and Conservative for the city council from Brooklyn, cautions that tolerating fare evasion “opens the window to normalizing crime.”

        Normalizing crime is the Democrats’ agenda. They tolerate lawlessness and philosophize about the root causes of crime.

        New Yorkers can’t wait until society fixes root causes. They need safety now. When it comes to subway crime, that means electing leaders who will crack down on farebeaters.

        Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and founder of SAVENYC @SAVENYC.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.